Questions for gun control advocates, part 1

[jimmy the one]

53. #1's false premises

shamash: .. an M1 carbine, a magazine-fed semi-auto rifle capable of using high-capacity magazines .. It has been available to civilians since 1945, and required no background check or license or even ID to purchase in an era (circa 1950) where the per capita firearm murder rate was the same or lower than it is today (circa 2010).

It is, arguably, the carbine to the m1 garand army rifle of wwII; the m1 carbine wasn't that effective at stopping Japanese soldiers, American GI's complaint was it took 3 shots where the m1 took one. So the carbine was short on stopping power.

shamash: Question: If you feel that this sort of weapon should be banned, list all other technologies freely available to civilians with no restriction in 1945 that you deem too dangerous to be allowed for any civilian to own today, despite there being no evidence of increased harm due to the civilian ownership of that technology?

You created two false dilemmas in #1, two faulty premises. First, you ignore the large BULGE in murder rates between 1950 & ~2010, as if there never was a doubling of murder rates & gun murder rates. Second, since circa early 1960's the current violent crime rate remains doubled, thus your contention that '..no evidence of increased harm due to the civilian ownership of that technology...' is dubious, & subject to scrutiny.

wiki, m1 carbine: The M1 carbine with its reduced-power .30 cartridge was not originally intended to serve as a primary weapon for combat infantrymen, nor was it comparable to more powerful rifles developed late in the war... Other soldiers and Marines engaged in frequent daily firefights (particularly in the Philippines) found the weapon to have insufficient stopping power and penetration. Reports of the carbine's failure to stop enemy soldiers, sometimes after multiple hits, appeared in individual after-action reports, postwar evaluations, and service histories of both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps. Aware of these shortcomings, the U.S. Army.. continued to work on shortened versions of the M1 rifle throughout the war, though none was ever officially adopted.